We’d finished Tironoot and, the group that were on Tel Katzir, elected to go back for our Kibbutz period awaiting the callup to do emun mitkadem at sivooy Bilu. Anyway we had a very good time on the kibbutz, I worked in the Banana fields. During October of ’58 “Porky”, as we affectionately referred to the commanding officer of the eizor, arrived at Tel Katzir and informed the guys that we were going to Mahaneh Shmonim and within a few weeks we were going to be Tzanhanim!! Well you can imagine how excited we were. We packed our kit bags, except for Henry Levitz who somehow had only his toiletry bag left, and piled into the truck and off we went!!
We arrived at the camp in time to watch the passing out parade of the previous machzor. We lined up on the road inside the camp and watched the proceedings… eventually a samal came along and without much ado told us that we had been called there to all the “avodah ha shchorah” till the start of the next mahzor!!! Well you can imagine our reaction!!! We had come to be fighters not to clean up the camp!!! It was already late afternoon so we got our kit, rifles, etc. and went to our tents still feeling very disgruntled. The following morning Arnie Sher and myself were assigned to go and collect supplies at Tel Hashomer.
When we got back in the late afternoon and returned to the tents we were greeted by a meeting of our “action committee”. It had been decided ~ that early the following morning we going to break out of camp through a hole in the fence at the top end beyond the tent area. We got up and went to hand in our rifles telling the sleepy guy in charge of the neshakia we were told to!! We then slipped through the fence, formed up into threes on the sand road and proceeded to run in formation to sivoov Bilu. I ran alongside as if I was in charge of the group.
We then split up into smaller groups and some took the bus, others hitched and we took a sheroot. Amongst our group was the late Chesi Lotkin, he spotted an army jeep approaching and in true Hollywood fashion said to the driver” Lose him!!”… We all packed up laughing. We arrived at the Malon Eden and were given rooms. Later that evening Arnie and I went off to visit a girlfriend in Ramat Can. When we got back around 10pm everyone was upstairs in the room on the roof. Apparently around 8pm a military truck had arrived wanting to take us back, a few soldiers had jumped out the back and came into the hotel asking where we were and telling the lady to advise us to come back asap!!!
The next morning we set off to see Simie at the Fed… We split up into small groups not to attract attention and arranged to meet in the lobby of a building across the road in Hayarkon Street.
We then all piled into the Fed and Simie called us into his office and said in his familiar Oudshoorn accent “You boys are giving me a lot of trouble!” We then explained our side and he called Ben Moshe of the Misrad Habitachon who came over and soothed things over. Then Simie said “You boys must go back to your unit!!” So off we went and when we got back were told that another group were coming the next day to partake in the work. A couple of days later we had a mishpat with Danie Maat the camp commander and were each given a 7 day suspended sentence. After that we really didn’t do much work and played k’labajas with our “sarge”!!
Later Arnie and I decided to go into pluga gimmel as we had walked passed the office and heard that it was going to be the first one to go to parachute training! It was the makim plugah so the training was extra tough but it was great.